Referer in php-

Question

What is the best method of doing the following: I have Page A with 2 buttons(for different things) which both take you to a login page(Page 3), When login details are filled in Page 3, the page that handles the data is page 4. I want page 4 to show things depending on which button was clicked in page a. I have read upon http referer, but i believe if i place a referer in Page 4, it will show the previous page that i am coming from, which is the login.

How can i resolve this? Thanks

Answer 1

http-refferer is not the best solution to do this. Simplest way is add some parametr to GET array, for example ?clicked_button=2 Http-refferer could be off. Moreover, referer will be display same url for that buttons (both of them are in ONE page)

EDIT on request: You could do it without form, <button id="button1" onClick = "javascript:location = "page3.php?clicked_button=1"; />

and in page3.php just read value in $_GET['clicked_button']: if($_GET['clicked_button'] == 1) ...

Answer 2

The referer is not always sent by browsers, and can be faked (and, in this case, as both buttons are on the same page, it would be kind of useless) ; so, you should not depend on it being set nor correct.

In this situation, a possible solution would be to :

• on page A, add some variable on your two buttons
  • like "page_login.php?button=1"
  • and "page_login.php?button=2"
• page login will receive that variable (ie, $_GET['button']), and store it in a hidden field of the form
• page 4 will, in turn, then receive that variable ; and you can use it to know which button was first used.

Answer 3

Use a session variable, eg $_SESSION['clicked_button'] = $the_button.

Answer 4

Remember to have a default in any case if those variables do not exist, ie user interferes with your form... but you should be using methods to prevent that anyways ;)